Brazil's Congress Rejects Proposal to Implement Gender Quota

Brazilian lawmakers rejected a bill Tuesday that would have guaranteed a 10 percent quota for women in the House of Representatives, the senate and city council positions.

"We only represent 10 percent of the legislature. This is very disproportionate," Workers Party Congresswoman Moema Gramacho argued. "Today, of the 513 parliamentarians [in the House], we only have 50 women. We need to change that."

Despite strong arguments in favor of the bill, the legislative measure received 293 votes, falling 15 votes short of the minimum requirement for approval.

Congresswoman Luciana Santos of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), which belongs to the governing coalition that supports President Dilma Rousseff, stated, "Brazil must face the political model that excludes the participation of women."

Even though it boasts a female president, Brazil has one of the lowest levels of female representation among elected officials in the world.

According to research carried out by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Brazil ranks 156th out of 188 countries in terms of its percentage of female politicians.

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Congressman Edson Moreira from the political opposition group, National Labor Party (PTN), opposed the gender quota proposal saying, “If this rule passes, everyone will have sex change surgery.”

​The Brazilian House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on further political reform agenda items Wednesday including a possible reduction in the number of signatures required to force congressional debate on an issue, from the current 1.5 million to 500,000.